If you are finding my spelling of Sheki inconsistent, that’s because it is inconsistently spelled!!! Most common spelling i saw was Seki on most signposts. Shaki is another that follows the Shaki Khans’ Palace and our grandly named hotel in Sheki also called Shaki Palace Hotel….!

A couple more pics from the hotel: a shot of the mountains surrounding Sheki and one of the facade of the hotel itself. The hotel was impressive, but not quite as grand as the pic suggests: although the rooms were large, the plumbing was a bit odd, there was no bar in the hotel that i could find – it all felt like with an investment in a refurb and upgrade, the hotel could become splendid…..

There is a large outdoor market in Sheki where we spent about an hour. I treated myself to what looked like the local equivalent of Turkish Baklava, called – i think – Halvesi. It was so sweet i could not manage more that a couple of nibbles and finished up leaving the remains in the fridge in the hotel room in Lahij. And i’ve got a very sweet tooth!

Here are a couple of pics:

The first two are how they sell meat in Sheki and the third is one of many stalls selling tobacco products. I got the impression that pretty much all the blokes in Sheki smoke…. and a few ladies, too!

A next stop turned out to be a real treat: the Shaki Khan’s Palace. It was built in 1797 by Muhammed Hasan Khan and was intended to house the Khans who were in charge of controlling Shaki as viceroys of the ruling Zand and later Qajar Persian dynasties until the time when these territories were annexed by the Russian Empire in 1813 after the Russo Persian Wars that started in 1804.

The bad news is that no internal photographs were allowed, which is a shame because it was one of the most impressive things i have seen on the trip! It was full of the most intricate wall paintings, some in the traditional Islamic style but also lots in narrative form almost like a strip cartoon telling stories of battles and wars. Pretty graphic, too, some of them with decapitations galore! The windows look not especially impressive from the outside, but once inside the sun shining through the coloured glass – using a technique called ‘shabaka’ – creates a really intensive, brightly coloured lighting effect which instead of spoiling the painting seems to enhance it. I thought it was brilliant!!!

I have ‘borrowed’ a couple of pics from Wikipedia just to give you an idea:

Here are some external pics:

The final pic in this montage is of the Three Saints Church which is close by the Shaki Khans’ Palace, no longer functioning as a church but as a Museum of Folk and Applied Arts. Its history is a bit woolly – there is no reference to it prior to 1853 although it looks a lot older to me – and there is a suggestion it was at one time used as a mosque.

Next stop on the walking part of our tour of Sheki was the two caravanserai, with about 700 rooms of various types between them, dating back not as long as many others we have seen but to the 18th/19th centuries. That may well account for their remarkably good condition, but i also sensed they had been substantially restored. One of the two is used as a tourist hotel!

That first pic is of the dome over the entrance to the caravanserai.

We enjoyed another large Azerbaijani lunch and i soon discovered that in the part of the country they only drink tea, no coffee!! So, you have a pic of a samovar and one of yours truly drinking tea – never been seen before!!!

I was pretty confused by the name ‘Albanian Church’: turns out there was an Caucasian Albania, nothing whatsoever to do with the European Albania about 1800 miles to the west….. This church – like so many others in this part of the world – has had a chequered history. It probably dates back to the 12th century, originally celebrating a rather obscure form of Christianity, evolving into Chalcedonian Christianity. The church is largely unused for worship mainly owing the small congregation in the village but we were told that a Georgian Orthodox priest conducts mass there infrequently.

More recent archaeological work demonstrates that the church is located on an ancient cultic site, dating back perhaps as far as 3,000 BC!

Here are some pics:

The final pic is yet another of the long dead president of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev who died in 2003. The current president is his son Ilham Aliyev, who got 86.02% of votes in the 2018 presidential election. Heydar Aliyev is regarded as the ‘father’ of the country, but the country is widely regarded as hugely corrupt and elections reckoned to be almost as fraudulent as those in Turkmenistan where a similar dynasty has been established!

The sharp eyed amongst you will spot the street in which the portrait appears is called Heydar Aliyev Street!!

Tomorrow we head off even deeper into the mountains to Lahij…..